Tech Telecom

Indian Government is finally taking steps to increase minimum broadband speed to 2 Mbps from 512 kbps. Earlier the government revised speed in August 2014 from 256 kbps to 512 kbps, which is now considered as extremely slow in most of the cases. By this crucial step, speed will increase to 4 times from now.

“I propose to take up the matter with the communications ministry. We will consider laying down a policy for increasing the minimum broadband speed from the current levels,” said IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Indian telecom regulator has also recommended improving minimum broadband speed earlier. “Speed must be above a certain threshold to enable the use of desired applications such as video viewing or gaming… Higher electronic communication speeds are relevant in knowledge-based communities. This is because it spurs productivity, and hence increases competitiveness,” the regulator had said.

With the faster internet, there will be an increase in competition in all spheres of economy and will also ensure the equal and inclusive growth of rural and urban areas. According to reports as per Akamai’s State, India has slowest average internet connection in Asia at 2.8 Mbps as of December 2015 and the global average was measured to be 6.3 Mbps. Also as per another report, India has around 330 million subscriptions (fixed and mobile) till December 2015. It is expected that there will be a growth of around 20% over next five years, and by 2020 there will be around 730 million subscriptions.

The government felt as many telecom providers are moving to 4G services that promise speed above 10 Mbps, fixed broadband connections speed must also increase as they provide direct connectivity to people’s homes especially as government initiated the fibre optic broadband outreach programme to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats called BharatNet.After successful implementation of this initiative, users will be streaming, browsing and downloading at higher speeds but as the internet tariffs are higher people are also expecting of decrease in tariffs.

After successful implementation of this initiative, users will be streaming, browsing and downloading at higher speeds but as the internet tariffs are higher people are also expecting that government should put a cap on internet tariffs also.